IT IS now fashionable to say that “the two-state solution is dead”. Or: “Time
for the two-state solution is running out”.

Why dead? How dead? It’s one of those things that need no proof. To say it is
enough.

If pressed, though, the fake mourners of the two-state solution give a reason:
there are just too many settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem. They can’t be
removed. It’s just impossible.

Is it?

TWO EXAMPLES are cited as evidence: the removal of the North Sinai settlements
by Menachem Begin under the peace treaty with Egypt, and the removal of the Gaza
Strip settlements by Ariel Sharon.

How terrible they were! Remember the heart-rending scenes on TV, the weeping
female soldiers carrying struggling settler girls away, the Auschwitz pajamas
with the yellow star worn by the settlers, the storming of the rooftops, the
rabbis with their Torah scrolls weeping in unison in the synagogues.

All this for just a handful of settlements. What will happen if half a million
people have to be removed? Awful! Unthinkable!

Nonsense.

Actually, the removal of the Gaza Strip settlers was nothing but a well-staged
tragicomedy. Nobody was killed. Nobody was seriously injured. Nobody committed
suicide, whatever their threats. After playing their assigned roles, all the
settlers left the stage. Only a handful of soldiers and police officers refused
to obey orders. The bulk of the army carried out the instructions of the
democratically elected government.

Will
the same happen again? Not necessarily. Removing West Bank settlers from the
hilltops in the heart of Biblical “Eretz Israel” Is something else.

Let’s look at it from close up.

THE FIRST stage of planning is to analyze the problem. Who are these settlers
that have to be removed?

Well, first of all they are not a homogenous, monolithic force. When one speaks
of “the settlers”, one sees before one’s mind’s eye a mass of half-crazed,
religious fanatics, expecting the messiah at any moment, ready to shoot anyone
who comes to remove them from their strongholds.

This is pure imagination.

There are such settlers, of course. They are the hard core, the ones who appear
on television. The ones who set fire to mosques in Palestinian villages, who
attack Palestinian farmers in their fields, who fell olive trees. They have long
hair, including side locks, wear the obligatory fringed garment under or over
their shirts, dance their odd dances, are so very, very different from ordinary
Israelis.

Almost all of these are new-born Jews (known in Hebrew as “those who go back in
remorse”), and are heartily despised by real orthodox Jews, who would not marry
their daughters to them. But they are a tiny minority.

Much more important is the so-called ”national-religious” core, the real
leadership of the settlement enterprise. They believe that God has given us this
land, all of it, and many of them believe that God also ordered them to cleanse
all the land between the sea and the river (the Mediterranean and the Jordan) of
non-Jews. Some of them believe, anyhow, that non-Jews are not full human beings,
but something between humans and animals, as held by the Kabbala.

This group has enormous political power. It is they who dragged successive
governments of all parties, into putting them where they are – sometimes
unwillingly, sometimes more than willingly.

They are concentrated in the smaller settlements, dispersed all over the
occupied territories. They have infiltrated the army and the government
apparatus and terrify the politicians. Their party is the “Jewish Home” led by
Naftali Bennett, the “brother” of Ya’ir Lapid, but they also have close ties
with the upcoming young leadership of the Likud and Lieberman’s crowd.

Any government interested in making peace will have to grapple with them. But
they are a minority among the settlers.

THE MAJORITY of the settlers are less vocal. They are mostly concentrated in the
“settlement blocs” that are strung along the Green Line, extending a few
kilometers inside the occupied territories.

They are called “quality of life settlers”, because they went there to enjoy the
clean air and the picturesque sight of Muslim minarets nearby, but mainly
because they got their dream-villas, with the Swiss red-tile roofs, for next to
nothing. They could not dream of ever acquiring anything similar in Israel
proper.

A category by itself are the orthodox. Their huge natural increase is crowding
them out of their towns and neighborhoods in Israel proper, and they desperately
need new housing, which the government is only too happy to provide – in the
occupied territories. They already have several towns there, one of which is
Modi’in Illit, the border town which is located on the lands of Bil’in, the
village fighting an epic battle to get them back.

Quite another story is the settlements in East Jerusalem. The hundreds of
thousands of Israeli Jews now living in the new neighborhoods there do not think
of themselves as settlers at all, they have forgotten all about the Green Line.
Indeed, they are quite surprised when reminded of it. It may be just a few
blocks away.

ALL THESE categories - and the many sub-categories – must be dealt with
separately. For each, there is a different solution.

Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that in nine months Kerry’s Dream will come
true. There will be a signed peace agreement solving all problems, with an
agreed timetable for implementation.

Let’s further assume that this agreement is approved by a large majority in an
Israeli referendum (and in a Palestinian one, too.) This would give our
government the political and moral power to tackle the settlement problem.

For the Jerusalemites, Bill Clinton had a simple answer: Leave them where they
are. Redraw the map of Jerusalem in such a way that “what is Jewish will become
part of Israel, what is Arab will be part of Palestine”.

Considering the immense difficulty of unscrambling the omelet there, this has
its attractions, especially if full sovereignty over the Temple Mount and the
Old City is restored to the Palestinians (and the Western Wall with the Jewish
Quarter remains in Israel).

For the big settlement blocs, the solution is already more or less agreed:
territorial swaps. The settlements hard on the border will be annexed by Israel,
Israeli territory of equal size (though, perhaps, not of equal quality) will be
turned over to Palestine.

This may not be quite as easy as it sounds. Annex the settlements only, or also
the land around and between them? And what about Ariel, the “settlers’ capital”,
which is located 20 km inside the West Bank? A
corridor? An enclave? And Ma’aleh Adumim, which, if annexed to Jewish Jerusalem,
would almost cut the West Bank in two? Plenty to argue about.

The “quality of life” settlers must be bought out. It’s a simple question of
money. Give any of them an equivalent or an even better apartment near Tel Aviv
and most of them will jump at it. Indeed, some polls have shown that quite a
number of them would move even today, if such an offer were made. (We suggested
this to Yitzhak Rabin, but he refused.)

There remain the hard-core settlers, the “ideological” ones, those who serve God
by living on stolen land. What about them?

THE SIMPLEST solution was that provided by Charles de Gaulle. After signing the
peace agreement that put an end to the occupation of Algeria after a hundred
years, he announced that the French army would leave the country on a certain
date. He told the more than a million settlers, many of them fourth or fifth
generation: If you want to leave, leave. If you want to stay, stay. The result
was a last minute frantic mass exodus of historic dimensions.

I can’t imagine an Israeli leader bold enough to follow that prescription. Even
Ariel Sharon, a brutal person without compassion, didn’t dare to.

Of course, the Israeli government could tell these settlers: “If you can make
arrangements with the Palestinian government so you can stay there, as
Palestinian citizens (or even as Israeli citizens), by all means do so. ”

Some naïve Israelis say: ”Why not? There are a million and a half Arab citizens
in Israel. Why can’t there be some hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews in
Palestine?”

Unlikely. The Arabs in Israel live on their own land, where they have lived for
centuries. The settlers live on “expropriated” land, and they have justly earned
the hatred of their neighbors. I don’t see how a Palestinian government could
allow it.

There remains the hard core of the hard core. Those who will not budge without
violence. They will have to be removed forcibly by a strong government supported
by the bulk of public opinion, expressed through the referendum.

A civil war? Not really. Nothing like the American Civil War, nor like the
present Syrian one. But still a hard, violent, brutal struggle, in which blood
will be shed.

Do I look forward to it? Certainly not. Does it frighten me? Yes it does. Do I
think it means we should give up the future of Israel, give up peace, give up
the two-state solution, the only solution there is?